Tidying Up with Marie Kondo

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Part of a series on Netflix. [View Related Entries]

About

Tidying Up with Marie Kondo is a Netflix series in which Japanese author and organizing consultant Marie Kondo goes into people's homes and helps them declutter. The show has become popular and has spawned memes about Kondo's cool and pleasant demeanor.

History

Marie Kondo grew popular with her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, released in 2011.^[1] The book was a bestseller in Japan and England. Kondo is a proponent of the KonMari method, which helps people declutter by having them look at objects and consider the question, "Does it spark joy?" On January 1st, 2019, Netflix released a series in which Kondo entered American homes and encouraged coupled to declutter by practicing the method (trailer shown below).

Reception

The show has received mostly favorable reviews from critics, garnering a score of 69/100 on Metacritic.^[2] Positive reviews have praised how the show's concept quickly gets philosophical, as "clutter" in many episodes comes to represent the person the subject wishes to be against who they actually are.^[3] More mixed reviews said the show was low-drama and low-stakes and could be considered underwhelming.^[4]

Online Presence

The show has grown popular online, as users have taken to parodying Kondo's pleasant demeanor, particularly in tweets. Mashable^[5] covered parodies that cast Kondo as a more villainous spirit. For example, Twitter user @jpbrammer made a joke about Kondo being in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, gaining over 290 retweets and 1,900 likes (shown below, left). User @kashanacauley gained over 1,800 retweets and 10,000 likes with her joke about the show (shown below, right). Jokes about the show have also been covered by Vice^[6] and Apartment Therapy.^[7]